De Profundis
by Arthur Delapore
Summary: What happens when you take a fogshrouded town filled with witchhunters and add to that a frightened young girl, a charming yet sinister occultist, and extradimensional monsters? The answer lies within this story. A Christabella x Warren romance. EPISODE T
1. Chapter 1

**De Profundis**

**By Arthur Delapore**

**Episode One**

Out of the tatters she rose, first noticing with a strange wonder that there was no blood on the floor. No blood – no remnants of the ripped flesh, no ringing of the tortured screams that had accompanied the girl Alessa's terrible revenge. A deep and profound quiet had descended over the church only broken by the muffled sounds of Adam and twenty other shabbily dressed members of the church as they rose from the battered floor. Dust motes floated in the muted, foggy sunlight that filtered in through the windows.

"Christabella, you – you are still alive," Adam, one of the churchmen, met her cold eyes fearfully, the horror of those moments spent in the Darkness still not forgotten.

"How many of us remain?" she asked quietly.

"Half have fallen to the Darkness," another man spoke up.

Christabella nodded, turning her dark searching eyes upon her frightened congregation. Raising her voice, she said, "Together, our purity has overcome the power of the Darkness! We have passed through the fire and brimstone and been found worthy. Those of us who were lost were weak and had not the strength to fight the powers of the Darkness, but we have."

"Anna's mother is no longer with us," one man called out.

"She was weak," Christabella returned, her dark eyes shining. "As her daughter was weak."

Just then, the sound of a broken ladder falling over met the ears of the congregation. They all turned to see Cybil groaning and rubbing her head. "Oh, shit, what a headache," she groaned. She looked up and saw Christabella and the congregation staring at her, aghast. "Damn!" Cybil swore, standing up abruptly.

"You were burned," Christabella's eyes flickered. "How is it, then, that you are alive?"

Cybil shrugged, wiping the sweat off her face with the back of her hand. "Don't ask me," she said. As she spoke, she grasped a long splintered shard from the broken ladder and held it in front of her like a bayonet. "But I'm not about to let you screwballs try it again."

"I don't understand, Christabella," Adam muttered. "Why did a witch and blasphemer such as this woman survive the fire and the purges of the Darkness?"

Christabella's face hardened and then a grim little smile reached the edges of her lips. "Because she is a part of the Darkness!" she said, her voice rising as her eyes burned with fanatical intensity.

Cybil interrupted: "Before we start that up again, what I'd like to know is how the rest of you survived. From what I've been hearing, it sounds like a different kind of purging was going on while I was out."

"That doesn't concern you," Christabella spat, her face white. Then she added, in a softer voice: "All of us were killed in the Darkness." She hesitated as the memories of the ripping, merciless barbed wires entering her flesh crowded back in her mind. "But somehow we are once more whole."

Cybil glanced up at the grey, misty sky through the windows. "Yeah, and still in this god-damned limbo," she retorted.

Christabella glanced at her with a terrible calm. "You will never leave Silent Hill," she said with a strange smile. "None of us have and none of us shall."

* * *

It had surprised him how very little there was on the Internet in relation to that haunted town "Silent Hill." Save for a few obscure and amateurish ghost hunters' websites, nothing existed but for the rumours that he had heard from certain folk in remote highway bars and the accounts of those who had survived the terrible fire that had ravaged the town several decades ago.

And yet if there was anything he possessed, it was a nagging relentlessness, particular in the pursuit of weird and esoteric studies. While other men might spend an evening in the company of drinking partners or women, his companions were the midnight candle and an ancient book of dark secrets.

It had taken six months to accumulate enough knowledge to make a reasonable guess as to where the abandoned town lay, but the delay had only whetted his curiosity to a still keener sharpness. There is no need to go into the painstaking methods he took to secure his information; the many shadowy characters he was forced to contact, the long nights he spent in furtive exploration of the police records.

If there was any true hindrance to the stranger's queer researches, it was in the form of Thomas Gucci, a West Virginian officer.

"Strange that you should be asking about that place," Gucci said with an exaggeratedly Southern drawl. "Just the other week, there was this fellow named Mr. Da Silva, I believe, who said he'd lost a wife who'd run off there."

The stranger commented on how Silent Hill would be a rather unusual place for a wife to run off to.

Gucci shrugged. "You never know with women," he said evasively. "Just recently, Officer Cybil Bennett, one of the more reliable cops, just up and disappeared."

The stranger inquired as to the likelihood of Officer Bennett 'just up and disappearing.'

"I'll admit, she's not the type I would have thought to have done something like that," Gucci admitted. "But she's had a rough few years in the force – like I told Mr. Da Silva, she even found a kid who'd been chucked down a mine shaft by a loony." Gucci shook his head. "No, sir, if you've got any sense, you'll steer clear of that place."

The conversation could have gone badly for the stranger, except for the fact that unlike Mr. Da Silva, he chose not to argue with Gucci. Instead, Gucci was favourably impressed not only with the polite, unassuming nature of the stranger's character, but also with his extensive knowledge of Gucci's efforts on the police force during the last twenty years. Perhaps the fact that the stranger did not have a missing family member involved had a great deal to do with his detached air; or perhaps it lay in his possession of both a gentle, soft-spoken demeanour and an underlying coldness and calculating aspect that few acquaintances and even close friends detected except in brief, unexpected flashes.

Coincidentally, the following night as Gucci drove home thinking that he would not have to spend the next morning cleaning up one of Mr. Da Silva's rampages through the confidential area of the police files, the stranger was already carefully and methodically sifting through every single record that pertained to Silent Hill. It might be added, however, that he was very precise in making certain that the records room looked exactly as it had before his entering, so Gucci did not have a bad morning after all.

Thus it was that by nightfall, he was already driving down the lone highway under the twisting, darkened trees and the muted, fog-wrapped Gibbous moon. A dreamy, airy quality had descended over the land as completely as the white mist that dimmed the headlights and swirled about the car.

He had only driven for a half an hour when he caught a glimpse in the thickening fog of a shadow by the side of the road. Slowing the car, he saw that it was a girl – probably around ten years old – stumbling in the bracken by the edge of the forest. He parked the car by the side of the road and climbed out, coming towards her and asking who she was and whether she was lost.

The girl looked at him, eyes wide with fear, her lips trembling and her cheeks stained with tears. She seemed to hesitate the way children do when trying to judge whether a stranger might be a friend or a danger. This particular stranger had the quiet demeanour of a parent, but the disquieting smile of the cloaked, Death-like destroyers that haunt the minds of children that are cautioned against speaking to those they do not know. His general impression, particularly in the frightened mind of the little girl, was something between a mysterious guardian and a familiar nightmare.

"I'm – I'm Rachel," she said, her voice trembling and her eyes still fixed upon his face. Then, her eyes wavering, she asked, "Who are you?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Episode Two**

He looked at her for a moment and then smiled slightly. "You're shivering, my dear," he said, his voice full of calm concern. Something in his tone made the girl take some comfort and she moved closer to him, taking his hand in her fingers as though afraid of the silent fog that billowed about them.

"I want to go home," she whispered, her voice small and eyes huge with fright.

"Where is your home?" he asked.

"Please, can we get in your car…please?" she looked as though she were on the verge of tears. He nodded shortly and led her towards his car which remained parked by the side of the lonely road, the headlights still on. She crawled into the passenger seat and he closed the door behind her, resuming his place at the driver's seat. He started the car and locked the doors before glancing back at the child again. She looked a bit calmer, but she was still shuddering slightly.

He spoke first: "Now, my dear, why don't you tell me where you live so that I can get you back there?"

"Because – because it's no use," she looked at him, her eyes wide. "I'm trapped here…and now you are too!" She hesitated, and looked at him as if suddenly puzzled. "Aren't you?"

His eyes flickered. "What do you mean?"

There must have been something in his eyes that seemed strange and stern, for she began to cry softly.

"Don't be afraid," he said, his voice a bit warmer. "You do understand that I can't take you home if I don't know where your home is, don't you?"

She shook her head, blinking back tears. "It's no use," she repeated. "And I don't want you to leave…_they _might have changed, too."

"They?"

She met his questioning look. "The ones at the orphanage," she said.

"You're from the orphanage, then," he said, as he gunned the car back on the road and resumed driving down the winding country road. He thought that he saw a road sign flash in his headlights through the mist; was sure beyond a doubt that the sign had borne the words "Silent Hill." A grim smile reached his lips, but the girl did not see it for she was gazing ahead with a look of renewed fear.

For there ahead under the soft rain of falling ash, there was a town: still and silent with only the sound of the wind rustling through the dead, broken shells of buildings that still stood.

The man stopped the car by the side of the road, the morning sun beginning to shine dimly from the edge of the horizon through the thick mist. Rachel climbed out as he did and ran around the car to where he stood, as if fearful to be alone for even a minute.

"Why are we getting out?" she asked, her voice betraying some panic.

"Because we are going in there," he replied; he said 'there' as though he were speaking of a labyrinth rather than a town.

"Why?" she asked.

At that moment, they heard behind them the sound of running footsteps. They turned to see a woman and a girl of Rachel's own age coming towards them.

"Okay, how did you get here?" the woman asked, panting for breath. Her hair was disheveled and her clothing bloodstained and ripped. The girl beside her looked a bit bewildered but unharmed.

"Well, how did _you_?" he asked with mild irony. "I don't believe this place is a tourist attraction – yet, anyhow." Then, softening a bit, he added, "You look as though you've been in an accident. Are you all right?"

The woman ran her fingers through her hair as though his appraising gaze had made her suddenly conscious of her unkempt appearance. "I'm – we've been through a lot," she said shortly. "Right now, me and my little girl are just trying to figure out how to leave this town." She hesitated and then added, "I guess I ought to tell you my name before I ask for yours: I'm Rose and this is my daughter Sharon." Sharon seemed to glance at her mother as though for a moment she did not recognize her own name, but then smiled a bit and nodded.

"I'm Rachel," the girl by the man's side spoke up, looking visibly comforted by the sight of Rose's motherly demeanour. Rose glanced at the man expectantly.

"My name is Warren," he replied. There were cold lines of amusement at the corners of his lips now. "Well, now we're a regular expedition, are we not?"

"I guess we are," Rose returned. There was something unsettling about him, though she had not taken an immediate dislike to him. "You still haven't explained why you came here to Silent Hill."

"Neither have you, my dear," he said, still with that same tone of gentle mockery.

"Have you tried leaving?" she persisted.

"Of course not, I've only just arrived." His tone was a bit wearied now as though he were growing bored of the conversation. Rose refused to give up her interrogation, however.

"Why would you come here?" she asked.

"The same question could be asked of you, you know," he reminded her.

She was beginning to realize that Warren would not show one of his cards unless she showed him a bit of her own deck. "All right," she said. "I'll tell you everything that has happened to me and in return, will you tell me your real reasons for being here?"

"No," he replied. "But I will listen to what you tell me and I will try to help you as best as I can. I hope that will do?"

Rose hesitated and then said tersely, "Well, I guess it'll have to."


End file.
